How I Booked 3 Business Class Seats on Swiss Air
- diaryofapointstrav
- 15 hours ago
- 6 min read
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Finding business class seats award space can be really difficult. With rising credit card annual fees and devaluations, it can feel like the credit card points and miles game is become unattainable for the average family. I get that. As a family of 3, it's often challenging to find enough space for all of us in business class at a rate we want to pay, but our daughter isn't old enough yet to sit by herself. So what does that mean? We just need to dig a little deeper for our redemptions!
Choosing our Flight
Swiss Air is a great option in this situation. With multiple award seat releases on the same flight, you can realistically book many seats in business class, although it's not for the faint of heart. Based on my experience, as I'll share below, seats are released incrementally, and booked up fast. You have to be vigilant, fast, and decisive to get the seats you want.
We pivoted to booking flights to Zurich after our direct NYC --> TLV flight was canceled by American Airlines. We wanted a European city that was Shabbos friendly, kosher food friendly, family friendly, and luxury yet cheap hotel friendly! Basically a super friendly city :) Zurich met all these and more!
Swiss Air being part of the Lufthansa group means they release a lot of their award seats very close to the departure date. As was our case, we were looking to book something last minute to replace a canceled flight. I'm a type A traveler so believe me when I tell you that a high stress tolerance is NEEDED for this. One week before our originally scheduled departure date, we still had nothing booked. The week prior to that, we had seen Swiss Air availability but it was gone by the time we decided to book. We chose the chaotic route of waiting and luckily it paid off! Monday night 2 seats opened in business class. We booked it fast and held our breath for more availability. A phone rep confirmed that there were still at least 10 seats in business class available for cash purchase so we were hopeful. Tuesday came and went with no seats. We started debating flying on different flights (leaving from EWR and JFK but landing around the same time) or having one adult fly in economy. None of these options were ideal. Finally, Wednesday afternoon another seat opened up! We snatched it up and breathed a sigh of relief.
So how did we actually book it?
Swiss Air is a codeshare partner with Air Canada. That means, if available, you can use Air Canada Aeroplan miles to purchase Swiss Air tickets on the Air Canada website. The flight and aircraft are Swiss Air's. Only the booking portal and currency are Air Canada's. Air Canada charges 60k points plus about 79 CAD for a one way business class ticket from NYC to ZRH. That's the flight we booked. But we didn't pay 60K. We maximized an amazing transfer bonus to save even more!
Chase is a transfer partner with Air Canada. That means that you can take any Chase Ultimate Rewards points earned and transfer them to Air Canada as long as you meet two conditions: you hold a premium card (Chase Sapphire Reserve or Preferred, and Chase Ink Reserve or Preferred) AND the name on Chase account matches the name on the Air Canada account exactly. This is why holding a premium card pays off! On top of being able to transfer points, Chase had a transfer bonus going on of 20%. That means that for every 1,000 points I transferred from Chase to Air Canada, I received a bonus 200 points. The simple math to figure out how much you need is as follows: take whatever the usual transfer rate is, add a decimal, add the transfer bonus number. Now take the miles required, divide it by the previous number and there you have the required miles you need to transfer for a given booking!
In this case, the usual transfer bonus is 1 (every Chase point is equal to 1 Air Canada mile). The transfer bonus is 20. That gives me 1.2. The points per flight was 60K. 60,000/1.2=50,000. I only needed 50,000 points to book each seat! To sum it up, I used 150,000 Chase points transferred to Air Canada to book 3 business class seats on Swiss Air. These seats sell for ~$8,500 cash each! The taxes and fees came out to about $57 USD per person. Not too bad!
Experience on Board Swiss Air Business Class Seat
The aircraft we flew was definitely an older product. The seats were worn, the design old fashioned, and everything felt used and tired. The seat itself is very spacious compared to other business class seats we've flown (United, Delta, Emirates, Singapore, etc). However, I've learned that with a more spacious seat comes less privacy. The seats were not super closed in and half of the seats have the console on the inside, which means the seat lays flat adjacent to the aisle. Anyone passing to the restrooms is bumping into you and watching you sleep. One major plus for families traveling with children is that on this aircraft, similar to the Emirates cabin we flew the Milan 2 years ago, the window seats are doubled up. That means there's a business class seat without direct aisle access. As a mom, that makes me sleep a lot better on board, knowing that no one can get to my daughter without waking me up. We were lucky to have two such seats, plus another across the aisle. Another unique feature on this cabin was the massage feature in each seat. Definitely helpful after that stressful booking process :)
Hard product aside, the service was incredible. The flight attendants were truly kind and looked like they love what they do. Amenity kit was decent. The kosher meal was hardly edible, though. I want to say you can't really blame the airline, but somehow the US airlines have figured out how to get decent kosher meals in business class. My experience on both Delta and United kosher business class meals were amazing. Other non US airlines have never had any kosher meals worth writing home about.
So was it worth it?
Just based on the fact that I paid $57 for a transatlantic flight, I would say yes. On top of that, we sat in business class and were able to lie flat for the entire flight! I don't think there's even a question :) Given the wide availability and low redemption rate, this route is definitely on our radar for future trips. Other routes that can probably be booked this way (although I didn't personally confirm seeing this on the site) would be Austrian Air to Vienna and Lufthansa to Germany. Those are all part of the Lufthansa Group and codeshare partners with Air Canada. My guess is the redemption would be similar. Let me know if you book any of those!
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